Why don't students like school?

...is a book by Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist.

"Kids are naturally curious, but when it comes to school it seems like their minds are turned off." That's on the dust jacket. It reminds me of a presentation I made several years ago to the "Men's Business Breakfast Club".

I asked, "How many of you like learning something new?" and every hand went up.

Then I asked, "How many of you liked school?" and almost every hand went down.

This morning one of the dads was walking into school with his young daughter. She was skipping down the hall. He said to me, "Never before have I seen a child who was happy to go back to school after summer vacation." I smiled and said, "Yes, I know we're different."

Another dad, a third-year medical student, noted that a classmate wrote on her Facebook page, "Two words for today: yuck! and yeah! Yuck because school has started again; Yeah because I'll be done at the end of this year."

I've never met that med student. I wonder whether she is going into the wrong career, or whether she is crying out about how poorly schools fit students?

Another physician on another day, Dr. Montessori, a woman who went to medical school after deciding she did not want to become a teacher, took one of life's strange turns and dedicated her life to working with children. She approached the task the way a scientist would. After all, she was a scientist. She began by observing children, by finding out how they learn, and then began designing learning materials. This led to the creation of learning environments and the redefinition of the role of the adult. And when she was all done, the children rediscovered the joy in learning.

E-mail to Fast Company

Wonder whether education really matters?

It does, but not in the way common knowledge suggests. Ivy League? MBA? Technical training?

What do the following people have in common: Sergei Brin, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Will Wright, Jimmy Wales, Sean Combs, and Julia Child?

If you said they are all creative, entrepeneurial, shapers of the culture, I'd agree.

They also attended Montessori schools as children, and note that approach to education (hands on, experiential, self-directed) shaped them.

Interested?

John Long
Head of School
The Post Oak School
Houston, TX

Julia Child

I'm going to see the new movie about Julia Child because ... she was such a character (I remember watching her on tv cooking with a blow torch!)...and I truly admire Meryl Streep (who plays Child in the movie)...and I love to eat...and I love what changes she provoked in the American diet since my boyhood days when canned chop suey was considered adventuresome (at least in my family)...and because she was a Montessori child.

That's right, Julia Child attended Montessori school and credits that education (in her book Julia Child and Company)for her love of working with her hands.

Actually, I see much more Montessori than that in Mrs. Child.

Several Houston chefs were interviewed about Julia Child for a story in today's Houston Chronicle.

Michael Cordua (chef and owner of Cordua Restaurants) said, "Julia was a role model to me in that she broke away from the homogenization of the American diet in the '50's--white bread, canned veggies, etc. She was a pioneer in taking an ethnic cuisine center stage and paved the way for the rest of us to express our culinary heritage to mainstream America."

A pioneer. Montessori kids have the courage and the creativity to be pioneers. How about Montessori kid Jimmy Wales who invented Wikipedia? He reinvented the old fashioned book-based encyclopedia written by experts and revised every couple of years. Everyone said everyone can't collectively write an encyclopedia. It will be worthless...

Ryan Hildebrand (executive chef at Bistro Don Camillo and Bistro Provence) said, "I remember watching her show with my mom. Her character added a sense of fun to cooking, which generated an interest in me. She made an omelet look fun. It didn't look like work. She showed you could spend your day in the kitchen and it was a fun and happy place to be. She put a happy spin on what can be a very taxing career."

A sense of fun. It didn't look like work. When a group of parents and teachers sat down together to describe Post Oak graduates, one of the characteristics was, "They are fun to be around. Their enthusiasm, civility, and respect for others are contagious."

Stacy Crowe-Simonson (executive chef and owner of Chez Nous) said, "Her history of going into the kitchen so blind and becoming such a master of it definitely gives women an inspiration. It did for me....She takes the fear out of trying something new."

Montessori wanted kids to develop "a friendly relationship to error,"--to understand that mistakes are a normal part of learning, and that to learn, you must be willing to make mistakes, and then to move forward. Unfortunately, traditional schools are more concerned with knowing than with learning. And when that is your concern, mistakes are an embarrassment, a red mark on the page, a poor grade on the report card. And the result is resentment, shame and fear--rather than encouragement to accept mistakes as the price of admission to the steep part of the learning curve.

Robert Del Grande (chef/owner of RDG + Bar Annie) said, "Julia was the same person on TV or in front of a group or having coffee with her. There wasn't a stage persona. If you were talking to her one on one, it was the same as if she were on a TV show. She had no pretense at all. She was completely genuine."

Del Grande's observations echo loud and clear another characteristic our parents and faculty observed in Montessori grads: "They are comfortable in their own skin. Post Oak grads have grown up in a nurturing culture that encourages self-motivation, independent thinking, and the experience of taking on big challenges—all great preparation for whatever life has in store for them."

Popcorn anyone?

The Wrong Stuff

“We’re teaching the wrong stuff.”

Who said that? Some wild-eyed education critic in 2007 or Dr. Maria Montessori in 1907? Neither. That conclusion comes from an engineering professor at the North Carolina State University. Is he calling for more calculus and physics? No, he is calling for engineering schools to move away from “…traditional ‘I talk, you listen’ pedagogy toward the active, cooperative, problem-based approaches that have been repeatedly shown to equip students with the skills...” graduates will need to be employable in the 21st century American job market.

Sounds like a Montessori classroom.

What are the personal attributes Professor Richard Felder believes schools must help engineering students develop?
• creative and entrepreneurial mind set;
• holistic, multi-disciplinary thinker;
• strong interpersonal skills;
• language skills and cultural awareness;
• self-directed learner.

That list sounds like the portrait of a Post Oak School graduate; universal characteristics that Montessori schools across the country consistently report observing.

You can read Felder’s brief article on Tomorrow’s Professor Blog, a partnership between Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

My Mount Evans

I had read the book. In fact, I read two of them: Road Biking Colorado and Riding Colorado's Mountain Passes. Both books gave route descriptions and other practical details along with romantic descriptions of the scenery and the sense of exhilaration awaiting the intrepid bicycle rider willing to take on Mt. Evans. I had already ridden Colorado’s second most monstrous climb, Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, not once but twice this summer. I had done everything I could to ready my mind and my body to pedal to the top of that mountain. And still I was not truly prepared.

I am both a reader and a writer, and yet I must confess that books could not prepare me. Books are two dimensional abstractions, and Mt. Evans is an enormous three dimensional reality. An artful author touches the reader’s imagination in reporting his own first-hand impressions, but in the end, one person’s experience is never congruent to another’s.

Even my own experience riding many other mountain roads did not prepare me for this mountain, this road, this day.

Mathematics helps us understand: how many miles of climbing, at what speed, at what heart rate, for how long, at what gradient, to what altitude, at what temperature and wind velocity. But even all of my measurements failed to describe the personal challenge of propelling my bike upward and onward each moment, and the recommitment that came with each pedal stroke to give one more stroke, and then another, and another.

There were dark moments: halfway to the summit I doubted I was up to this challenge, but I pushed the doubts aside. I said to myself, “I have topped other mountain roads before, some real, some metaphorical; I know I have both physical and spiritual strength; I know I can do this.” Self-confidence based on experience, and self-knowledge helped me conquer those moments of doubt.

And then it got harder. The mountain answered my renewed resolve. The road got steeper as I reached higher altitude; the air got colder, and the wind grew stronger, much stronger. And then my authors betrayed me; the National Forest Service betrayed me. Everywhere it was written that the ride was 28 miles from Idaho Springs, 14 miles from the park entrance to the summit. There at the side of the road was mile post 14. And still I looked upward toward the summit. Several more switchbacks on the road. I wanted to stop. To complain. I don’t know what I wanted. I was mad.

At that moment I remembered: I chose this path; I chose this ride; I chose this challenge because it is hard, because it is the ultimate ride in the mountains, and that I was getting everything I wished for and more. I smiled. I laughed at myself, at my weakness, and I pushed on.

Mountain goats greeted me at the summit. Coasting across the highest parking lot in the United States, I saw snowy peaks in every direction. I was electrified with joy, with the sense of accomplishment that comes from setting a challenging personal goal and making it.

I thought about our children, my own sons and your children and all of the children in all of the Montessori schools around the world. We offer them an education based on personal, hands-on experience, one that offers many many successes, one building upon another, some small, some big, and failures, too, because we must encounter moments of difficulty, even failure, in order to build psychic strength and the knowledge that we have the personal resources and resolve to overcome adversity. And we invite them to make choices, to set individual goals, big ones. Riding up Mt. Evans on a bicycle is not everyone’s goal. But everyone has their own Mt. Evans…if they have the courage to see it and to take it on. That is what I wish for my own children and for yours.

Big smiles? School must be out

That was front page news in the Houston Chronicle. In that view, school represents the curse of Adam, the burden of work you don't want to do.

Poor children.

I am reminded of one of our graduates, Travis Caton, whom we interviewed several years ago when he was a senior at Bellaire High School. It was right after Christmas break and Travis recalled phone conversations with some of his high school classmates who were whooping it up because school was out. He joined in the whoopery because he did not want to be seen as a total dork. In the interview he expressed his real feelings:

"I think that school is a privilege. Learning is a privilege."

A rare comment from a football player? Just what I would expect from a Montessori kid. Don't get me wrong, Montessori kids love summer. But our headline would feature the tears we see every May as our kids mourn their separation from a learning environment prepared specially for them. Not the curse of Adam, but the Garden of Eden itself.

Motivation, part 2

"If you're lucky, you've had a Dan Green in your life. He's that special coach, the one who cussed the loudest, pushed the hardest, cared the most."

Cussed the loudest?

Pushed the hardest?

To do what? Make me perform better?

What emotion undergirds such tactics? Fear. Even in the name of caring. I will intimidate you into performing better becasue you are afraid that I'll curse at you. Or like Bobby Knight in one famous incident, choke you. Because I care for you. Want you to do your best.

Do we need abuse from others to do our best?

Darth Vader provoked Luke Skywalker's anger. This caused young Luke to up his effort, to fight harder--to do better. Mr. Vader did so intentionally because he knew that the anger pushed Luke to the Dark Side.

Yes, there is motivation there. The motivation of the Dark Side. All rewards and punishments and manipulation are motivators from the Dark Side, highjacking our true selves, our true desires. They stop us from hearing our calling, the inner voice, the inner motivation that will last for a lifetime. The chance we have to work with joy rather than with a sense of drudgery.